February 1527
by Thessaly
Summary: [Dorothy Dunnett, Niccolo] A moment with Nicholas de Fleury on a quiet morning.  MAJOR spoilers for Gemini consider yourself warned.


**(A/N)** _THIS IS A SPOILER. If you haven't read all of the House of Niccolo, and** especially** Gemini, you're going to know things that you would be better off not knowing. Trust me on this; unless you want to wreck the absolute, squirmy, symmetrical beauty that is the end of Gemini, **STAY AWAY** or you will be **UNHAPPY**. This is based on Dorothy Dunnett's House of Niccolo series – all credit to her. I believe Andreas told us this was never going to happen, but I really wanted it to. Perhaps he's wrong, sometimes. _

The February air was cold and so bright you could almost see it, brilliant gold arcing down to the cobble streets like swords or dangling banners. Nicholas de Fleury sat at the window facing away from the street, tinkering with the wheels and cogs and little glass beads. He remembered Julius telling someone, a long time ago, that Claes was always making toys. Too true, but then Julius, in his muddle-headed way, had often been right.

The bells of Edinburgh rang and energetic voices drifted in from the street. It wasn't so different from Bruges, really. The file on the closest table told Nicholas, discreetly, that it was the year 1527. He sighed. It had been such a very long time. He did not like feeling old, but he did, now and then, on these cold winter mornings when his joints ached and even Flooryland was quiet. Nicholas touched his creation, testing the mechanism. It was a pretty trinket: a music box with the world carved on the outside. He had not decided what tune it would play, yet, but play it would; there were some things fated. Nicholas de Fleury ran roughened fingers over Burgundy, Italy, the Levant, Africa, Muscovy, Scotland. The noise in the street quieted and he heard a moment's worth of fussing and the sound of a door banging.

"Sir?" One of the servants hovered in the doorway.

"I said I didn't want to be disturbed." He shaved a sliver off the lid and sat it straighter.

"Sir, it's –"

"I'm afraid it is rather important," said a lighter voice.

Nicholas stood up in time to see his self-possessed granddaughter enter the room, flanked by two waiting-women. She smiled, and the sunray she stood in glanced off bright hair and cornflower eyes. "Sybilla," he said, peaceably.

Sybilla Crawford nee Semple crossed the floor and reached up to hug her grandfather. "I _have_ missed you," she murmured, little hands tight on his shoulders for a moment. Nicholas de Fleury had known a number of beautiful women in a long and peripatetic life but at that moment he was willing to swear that Mistress Sybilla was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. There was something alight in her face that brought out a light flush from cold and a pure, internal exhilaration; when she moved, she was surrounded by something nearly tangible. It took Nicholas a moment to realize it, as he watched her cross the room again and speak to one of her women. Happiness, that was what Sybilla brought with her out of the cold. A bright, brittle excitement that glittered like a fine-cut jewel under light.

He had not seen her in a little over a year; not since he had been at Midculter to visit Gavin and Richard. Just weeks before, had he known it at the time, Gavin's gorgeous father would reappear from nowhere and descend, briefly, upon Midculter before blustering off to France leaving ears ringing, tempers inflamed, and the unfortunate Bailey child without a home. At the time Nicholas had seen, under the other man's bluster, the surprise and fierce pride in son and family that kept Gavin going without his father. And he had seen Sybilla, graceful and caustic, showing him her beautiful home with blank eyes. And he had chosen not to go back.

Sybilla turned from her woman, a white bundle in her arms. "No fear, sir," she said, smiling at Nicholas. She was St. Pol fair, with that hair and those eyes, and there was very little of her amiable, brown father in her. Her temperament too, he knew well, held more of Jordan of Kilmirren than Jordan Semple. "I do not come before the king empty handed." She walked the length of the floor and held out a small, tightly-wrapped object. "I wanted to you to meet each other," she added.

Nicholas glanced at his granddaughter and took the child from her arms. A small face, a few months old, peered up and dark blue eyes fixed on him inquisitively. A tiny hand waved and Nicholas, used to children, offered a thumb. The infant grabbed at it and held on with a surprisingly tight grip for someone his age. For a moment the eye-watering light bubbled and Nicholas felt, as he had not felt for decades, the brief dislocation of time and place that had once visited him unexpected. He saw a young man, fourteen perhaps, outside the window of this very street, head turned so that Nicholas could see a clean, bright profile capped with blond hair. Fine hands raised, moved, flashed fire from a ring, and the boy tossed his head back in a wave of light and laughed. Nicholas felt, second hand, a moment of joy and brief contentment that was not his own, just as the fear and misery and passion had not been his own. They belonged, Andreas had said, to someone else.

_This_. Was this, then, what he had been waiting for? Nicholas jiggled the child in his arms. This tiny creature, Sybilla's little son born to joy and wit and grace, holding tight to a finger and blinking at the world with blue eyes. This was the figure who had haunted much of Nicholas's adult life, drifting just beyond comprehension. _You lack ambition_, Ludovico had told him. Ambition, the will to lead and dominate; these things Nicholas did not have, and never would. They would be given to someone else: a boy who laughed, a leader who flew eagles in Russia, a man who loved dangerously deeply. _Yes_.

Sybilla leaned over the blanket and brushed her son's cheek. Her smile was sweet, full of abandon. She glanced up at Nicholas. "His name is Francis." That smile, the smile of a woman in love, lingered in the corner of her mouth. Nicholas looked at the child again. It had blue eyes and the beginnings of gold down. Sybilla was fair, of course, but there were other ways a child might inherit a certain, significant colouring. Sybilla had been in France, he remembered. In France, perhaps at Sevigny, where she had played as a girl; the estate sold, by Jodi and his wife, to Kathi's eldest son. To Francis Crawford, First Baron of Culter. Ah. Nicholas's mind, used to puzzles, felt this one rearrange itself.

A name is a tribute. It changes every generation, and as it is passed down, gathers meaning. Nicholas did not know where his own name came from, but he was aware that he was alone in that. Gelis had a hastily feminized form of her grandfather's Egidus when her parents realized that they would not get a boy. Sybilla's father had of course been named for Jordan de Ribérac; Sybilla herself for her mother but with a nod, also, to Jodi's wee auntie Bel. Sybilla's sister Euphemia, a tribute to Efemie Adorne, herself a tribute to Phemie Sinclair. Kathi's Margaret for Margriet Adorne and Hob for Robin, who had inherited his name from a long line of Berecrofts men. And, of course, Rankin. Francis. Francis for the dead child buried with Sophie de Fleury under a mound of rubble somewhere in Dijon. Francis for a brother Nicholas had never known and yet, for some reason, felt guilty about. Francis, passed by Kathi – with assistance from Gelis – to her son, because together Kathi and Gelis pinned down Nicholas to a point where he had no secrets (or at least very few). Francis, who had named his own son Gavin for a soon-forgotten Bailey ancestor. Francis, who deserved more than the sullen, backwards son his sullen, backwards wife had granted him. Francis. Ah. A four month-old child named Francis and Sybilla's curling smile, in which Nicholas could see a little Chouzy and a little van Borselen and, in the half-hidden dimple, a little Fleury. He knew, then, what she wasn't telling him; what she could not put into words but had to share because once she left this room she would have to hide it.

She took her son back in her arms. "Sir Nicholas de Fleury, meet Francis Crawford of Lymond, the Master of Culter."

Nicholas thought of the flashes of emotion he had caught: the joy, the peace, the terror, the soul-heavy grief. He looked at the baby and said, quietly, "Well met, Francis Crawford."


End file.
